Hugh Bonneville is Mr Brown for the last time as Paddington in Peru completes the happiest of trilogies.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Fantastic
00:06to speak again to Hugh Bonneville. Now Hugh, you're back for the third time as Mr Brown
00:10as Paddington returns, and I know I'm far more excited than probably good or healthy
00:16for me. There's a fantastic buzz around the release of Paddington 3, isn't there?
00:21I think the arrival of Paddington back onto our screens is a welcome tonic at a, let's
00:26face it, a pretty noisy time in our world when we have all sorts of conflicts of either
00:35political or geopolitical sorts. And so to have an innocent story of a bear trying to
00:40do right by people and to be kind and polite is a pretty healthy dose of medicine.
00:47And that's a huge part of the popularity and the attraction, isn't it? As you were saying,
00:51he is the innocent, we want to look after him, and everything he does is for the better
00:57of everyone else, isn't it?
00:58Well, the great thing about this Michael Bonne's creation is that he has no malice about him.
01:03He has no self-interest, really. He's always just trying to understand the world a bit
01:08better and how he can fit in better and how he can help other people. And that's why he's
01:14become, I think, such a sort of totemic character of goodness and the better thing, the better
01:22parts of all of us.
01:23And Mr. Brown is rather lovely and appealing too, isn't he?
01:28Yeah, Mr. Brown is, well, he has various crises in each of the journeys we've sent the family
01:36Brown on. And in this one, he's been told in no uncertain terms by his new punchy American
01:42boss, that if he wants to survive in the risk analyst's world, he needs to embrace
01:50the risk, not just calculate it. And so going to Peru seems to be just the right level of
01:58terror for Mr. Brown to embrace.
02:00And that's the lovely thing, isn't it? How each film moves on and is very different to
02:04the previous one, isn't it? And you were saying so intriguingly that in a way, number three
02:08reverses the situation of number one, doesn't it?
02:12Well, in the sense that Paddington, the first Paddington film is very much the, you know,
02:18has the bones of the first book, which is Paddington being discovered this stowaway
02:23in a strange land, not quite understanding how the world works and reaching out for the
02:28hand of friendship, which the Browns ultimately offer, first in the form of Mrs. Brown and
02:34then gradually the family, to the extent that at the end of that first film, if you may
02:38remember, we were on the roof of the Natural History Museum and Mr. Brown was defiantly
02:44taking on the baddie, saying that, you know, he may have a worrying marmalade habit, but
02:49he's one of us. And so in this third film, we actually reverse the situation that the
02:55Browns are now out of their comfort zone and go into the jungle from where Paddington
03:02originated. And Paddington feels he's going to confidently find his way home.
03:07But actually, he's a bear who does get a little bit lost. But we eventually, you know, he
03:12finds his own roots and asks the question, what is home, really? You know, can you have
03:19a home that is your tribe, so to speak, as well as a home where you end up? So the Browns
03:25going on that little adventure with him is a nice little reversal of the original.
03:30That's a subtext that makes the whole thing so appealing, isn't it? But sadly, you're
03:34saying very neatly after the three films, this is it, probably for you as Mr Brown.
03:40Yes, well, you know, the Rosie Allison, the producer said, you know, should we all get
03:44together for one last outing in a trilogy? So it feels like a perfect number for me.
03:49Fantastic. Well, really lovely to speak to you. I can't tell you just how much I'm looking
03:54forward to seeing it. It's going to be great.
03:55I hope you enjoy it.
03:57Absolutely. Enjoying the thought of it. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you so much, Hugh.
04:02Hey, cheers, bye-bye.